Germany regards itself as one of the most important countries in Europe producing agricultural machinery and food but cracks are appearing in its once robust farming structure.
Like every other country in the world the dairy industry in Germany is under intense pressure and farmers are losing money. Some are even questioning the benefits of remaining in the European Union.
Current milk prices are hovering around the 20-25 cents per litre (£0.17-£0.21) but the costs are 30 cents (£0.25) per litre just in fixed costs alone and not including labour.
Germany benefits the most from the CAP and receives the highest amount of direct payments from Brussels which totalled €5.1bn in 2014.
However, although this huge total provided support for some 320,290 beneficiaries over 60% of them received a payment below €10,000.
Farming across Germany has certainly become more intensive as the years have passed. In 1970, there were 1,146,900 farms in the country but by 2013 that figure had dropped to 285,000.
With the drop in farm numbers came an increase in average farm size which escalated from 11.1 hectares in 1970 to 58.6 ha in 2013.
Germany is the biggest milk producer in the European Union and produces around €11bn worth of milk and dairy produce per year.
In terms of livestock, there are around 4.6m dairy cows in Germany with 76,500 milk producers equating to an average herd size of 60 cows.
Approximately 47 per cent of German dairy cows are in herds of 100 or more as of May, 2015.
Also, the number of farms with more than 500 dairy cows increased in 2015 from 475 to 500.
There is a huge wave of uncertainty sweeping across the dairy industry in Germany as farmers there try to stay in production contending with some of the highest costs of production in Europe.
As more farmers start to produce milk at a loss some are starting to leave the industry, a practice which has been practically uncommon in the past.
Eberhard Hetzner is a former chief executive officer of the Federation of German Milk Industry, and he highlighted the fact that a number of farmers are ‘hopping’ from one processor to another to try and achieve a better pricing deal, but it’s not always the best decision.
Mr Hetzner said: “DLK is the biggest milk processor in Germany handling up to 25% of all the milk produced in the country.
“The company has 8300 dairy farmers in its group and is followed by Mueller which is the biggest private processer in the country.
“When the prices started to fall farmers started changing their processor but in some cases this shift can take up to two years to finalise so it can be a huge risk.
“When the quota system finished milk production rose by around 3.5% in Germany but when the demand for produce from China and Russia fell in 2015 there remains a huge glut of milk on the market.
“Around 10 years ago farmers stopped all deliveries for three to four months to allow the market time to catch up with demand and that action seemed to achieve its objections.
“Today, farmers need to consider something similar as there is simply just too much milk flooding the market.
“When the quotas finished milk prices were reasonable and some farmers invested quite a lot of money only to be caught in the price crash.
“Being a big dairy farmer is not always beautiful. In my opinion, it will be the small mixed farms that will survive this crisis.
“The market will remain where it is until late into 2017 but the challenge is for farmers to remain in business until then.
“Farmers are worried and although the European Commission is starting to see sense in paying farmers to reduce their supply, I don’t think Brussels has enough money that they would pay farmers to justify the cut